It's Not You It's Me

by Allison Rushby

  ‘OK, OK.’ Jas lifts his hands in mock surrender. ‘I agree. To all those things. Anything else we should get straightened out while we’re at it?’

  There’s a long pause. Um, last night might be a good start, I think. And the other thing—the skirting around thing. The pretending about us. I wouldn’t mind getting that cleared up, either. I shrug. May as well go for broke. ‘What did you mean before?’ I take the second option. ‘About the pretending? The skirting?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know.’

  This leads into a stare-off, which Jas breaks. ‘What did you think last night was about?’ he says.

  Triple shit. I don’t know the correct answer to this one, and I can’t seem to come up with a decent half-truth, so I try the real truth for once, ‘I thought it was—you know—a “one show only” kind of thing. That you were just, um…drunk.’

  ‘Jesus, Charlie!’ Jas runs his hands through his hair. ‘I would never do that to you. All this trip I’ve been wanting to…ever since I saw you on the plane. But I held off. I thought you weren’t interested. You said you weren’t. At Brown’s. You told me you didn’t feel that way about me any more.’

  Oh. Whoops. ‘That was just, um, something to say.’

  ‘Something to say?’

  ‘You kind of caught me by surprise. I didn’t know how to answer!’

  There’s another silence. Where do we go from here? But then, from somewhere, I get an ounce of courage. All I know is I have to ask him the big question. The question I’ve been wanting to ask since I first saw him on the plane.

  The question about That Night.

  I have to ask it because I still don’t know the answer to this one, do I? I mean, at first I thought I’d been rejected because Jas was gay, and I figured that those girls in the apartment had just been sexuality-testers. He’d been putting out feelers, for want of a better term.

  So much for that theory.

  Then, after last night and the bad sex, I figured…oh, who knows what I figured? Over the last twenty-four hours my brain hasn’t been in much of a condition to figure anything. So, I come right out and say it. Blazing guns. ‘The night before you left the apartment. I need you to explain…’

  ‘I know. I know I owe you an explanation about that.’ He pauses then. ‘I was hoping you might have forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten! Not likely! You don’t forget that kind of thing. It’s burned on my memory. Branded. I can still hear the sizzle.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m kinda the same on that score,’ he says as he slumps down into the chair he’d been sitting in before.

  He seems really embarrassed, I think, watching him. All of a sudden he can’t meet my eyes. And is that…? I look more closely. I think his cheeks are turning red.

  ‘I don’t know if I can say it. It’s so…’

  ‘Embarrassing?’ I finish off the sentence for him. ‘Don’t worry. It can’t be any worse than me thinking you were gay. I’ve got dibs on embarrassment this whole trip. You’re not going to come close. You couldn’t even if you tried.’

  ‘But it’s a guy thing.’

  A guy thing? Oh, now I get it—why he’s so coy. It’s a thing he shouldn’t be disclosing to me, being of the opposite sex. ‘Come on. You’re going to have to tell me sooner or later. I promise I won’t laugh.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ He sits there for a bit.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Don’t rush me.’ He’s so serious I have to try not to laugh right then and there. ‘I know you’re going to laugh, Charlie.’ He looks up, pointing at me.

  ‘I’m not going to laugh.’

  ‘You are.’

  I sigh.

  ‘Just remember I was young. And impressionable.’

  ‘All right. I’ll remember you were young and impressionable. Now, out with it.’

  ‘OK. Those girls. The ones at the apartment. I never slept with them.’

  ‘What?’ He must be joking to think I’d believe this. No wonder he thought I’d laugh. ‘You are such a bad liar, Jas.’

  ‘It’s true. I never slept with any of them. When I left that apartment I was basically, you know…’ he lowers his voice to a whisper ‘…still a virgin.’

  ‘Oh, come on…’ I’m not that gullible. There were scores of those girls. They seemed happy enough. They smiled in the morning like a litter of Cheshire cats. I look at Jas, trying to see if he’s lying or not. I’ve lived with him long enough to know when he is and when he isn’t. I realise he’s not. He’s not lying at all. ‘Then what…?’

  ‘…were they doing there?’ Jas finishes off my sentence this time.

  I nod.

  ‘I meant to sleep with them. It just never happened.’

  ‘But why not?’

  He pauses. ‘That’s the embarrassing bit.’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  Jas frowns.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘Goes back quite a few years before that. To my last year of high school.’

  ‘Right.’ I urge him on, take a step closer.

  ‘At the end of the year we’d arranged to go away. On a holiday. A week in an apartment at the beach. Schoolies week and all that.’

  I nod.

  ‘All the guys I went with—they weren’t…you know…’

  ‘Virgins?’ I try. Obviously this is not a thing a guy can ever own up to, even if he’s only sixteen.

  Jas nods. ‘I’d met this group of girls, at schoolies week, you see. Was inevitable that something would happen with one of them. But the guys I was sharing with—one night, before I went out to meet the girls, they told me something.’

  ‘Told you something?’ Where the hell is he going with this?

  I get a deeper frown.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Jas takes a breath. ‘They told me to watch out because sometimes it just wouldn’t work…’

  ‘What wouldn’t work?’

  Frown three.

  ‘Oh. Oh!’

  Jas nods. ‘They sat around the living room and gave me this whole big talk about it. How it won’t work and then you think about it and that makes it worse. A vicious circle. I didn’t know it then, but it was essentially a practical joke.’

  ‘And what happened? When you went out?’

  ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘No. God, that’s a bit cruel!’

  ‘You’re telling me. Just kept right on happening after that. They completely messed with my head.’

  I stand there, shocked. The kitchen girls flit into my head again. ‘But those girls. They seemed pretty happy in the morning.’

  Jas looks up at me and grins. ‘Ah, they were happy.’

  What?

  ‘Could still do other things, you know. In fact I became a bit of an expert.’

  My mouth falls open. Other things…

  ‘I’m all right now. I, er, I saw a professional. After I moved out.’

  ‘A sex doctor?’

  Jas shakes his head slyly.

  ‘What…?’ I start. Oh. That kind of professional. As in the oldest kind of profession. And that’s when I start laughing. Pissing myself laughing.

  ‘You said you wouldn’t laugh,’ Jas says. ‘You promised!’

  ‘I lied!’

  ‘It’s not funny. Cherelle was very helpful.’

  ‘Cherelle! Cherelle! I’ll bet she was!’ I keep right on laughing until I run out of breath. ‘Why didn’t you—you know—with me—that night in the apartment? Why didn’t I get the special treatment, like the girls in the kitchen?’

  Jas groans. ‘I was embarrassed! I knew you. I had to see you again.’

  ‘So you gave me the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech. Nice one. I guess that all worked out like you wanted it to, didn’t it?’ I think of the two years we never saw each other.

  ‘Yeah. Not exactly.’

  ‘Still, it’s nice to know it wasn’t me.’ I smirk.

  ‘Told you it wasn’t!’

  I
roll my eyes. ‘And of course I was going to believe you.’

  There’s a pause as, That Night covered, I remember something else. Something almost, if not quite as bad. Last Night.

  And Jas must know what I’m thinking, because he gets up and comes over towards me. ‘Last night. That was me too. I was drunk. Sorry. But I was thinking…’

  ‘Mmmm?’ I say as he comes closer.

  ‘I was thinking maybe I could make it up to you.’

  Make it up to me? My heart stops beating when I hear that.

  The next thing I know Jas has taken me by the hand and is leading me over to the bed.

  Then, slowly but surely, my heart kicks back in…

  …and I have the best sex of my life.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When I wake up, it takes me a minute or two to remember where I am and what I’ve been doing. When I do, I can’t help but smile. I roll over and put my arm out, ready for it to land somewhere on top of Jas, but he’s not there.

  I sit up. ‘Jas?’

  A voice comes straight back. ‘Hang on. I’m in here.’

  I let my breath out again. He’s in the bathroom.

  He comes out with a toothbrush stuck in his mouth, making a ‘be there in a sec’ sign with one finger.

  I get up then and, my nightie never having made it out of Jas’s backpack, grab a sheet and wrap it around me toga-style. It trails on the floor like a train as I make my way to the bathroom.

  ‘Thought you’d never wake up,’ Jas says when I stick my head around the door, his mouth full of frothy toothpaste.

  ‘You tired me out with your slick moves,’ I joke as he rinses.

  ‘Come here,’ he orders when he’s done, turning back around and leaning on the basin. Willingly, I pad on over, tripping over my sheet as I go. When I reach him, Jas pulls the fabric away from me and brings it up to let it fall back down over us, like a tent. I tilt my head up to his face and he kisses me.

  ‘Delicious. Minty-fresh,’ I say when I pull away.

  ‘Unlike some.’ He laughs. ‘What’s with the sheet?’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ I glance down.

  ‘It’s on, for a start. Take it off. Immediately.’

  I let it fall to the bathroom floor. It’s only fair. After all, Jas isn’t wearing a stitch…

  ‘That’s more like it,’ he says with authority.

  This makes me laugh. ‘Think you’re in control here, do you?’ I bring up one hand and point downwards. Something’s giving him away. ‘You’re easily pleased.’

  ‘You call us easy?’

  Hmmm. I guess he has me on that one. I yawn now. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m very, very tired. I think we should go back to bed.’ By the time I’ve finished my sentence I’ve already led him back over there.

  ‘Can’t argue with that. But wait a second. I’ve got a present for you…’ Jas says, before I can throw him down on the bed and ravish him.

  ‘Not another dirndl?’ I sit down, wary.

  ‘Nope. Found it this morning. Didn’t even know it was in there.’ He goes across the room to rummage in his backpack, bringing back something plastic with a cord on it. He places it over my head.

  I bring the object up to read what it says. ‘“Backstage pass. Access all areas.”’ I frown. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘I just thought you might like to, er, access all areas, you know?’

  ‘Is that right?’ I raise an eyebrow.

  Jas holds out a hand and I take it. He grabs my arm and pulls me up off the bed dramatically. ‘There’s just one thing. One thing I have to be sure of,’ he says seriously, giving me the stare—the one that makes my knees weak.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The leather pants. What’s that all about?’

  I laugh, and tell him if he’d bothered to bring any I could have shown him, but now he’ll just have to wait. Then I finally drag him down onto the bed and demand some of what was making those girls at the apartment so happy. After all—as we discussed last night and, more heatedly, two years ago—it wasn’t me, it was him. Now I figure it should be all about me.

  And Jas…

  Well, he does what he’s told.

  He is, after all, the kind of guy who looks after his fans.

  A good hour or so later—he really does look after his fans; I wasn’t joking about that—we order up some breakfast: some toast and coffee to throw down before we have to be on our way.

  ‘Do we have to go?’ I moan as Jas passes me a second cup. ‘I love it here.’

  ‘If we want the rest of our luggage we have to go.’

  ‘Bugger the luggage.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly. But we’ve got to take the car back.’

  ‘We could keep the car,’ I say hopefully.

  ‘Ah, so now the car’s OK? Now you’re siding with Michael?’

  ‘It might come in handy for doing the groceries.’ I try to keep a straight face, but can’t.

  ‘You’ll be a kept woman in no time.’

  I put down my cup. ‘I’ll never be a kept woman, and don’t you forget it. I can write my own pop songs and sell them to boy bands if I want a yellow Porsche.’

  ‘Maybe I should move on too. Sculpt things out of cow dung, or something. Call it modern art and sell each installation to stupid rich people at ridiculous prices.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Just get a move on, Notting.’

  Down in the reception area, Jas charges the room, breakfast and our few phone calls to his work account while I flip through the papers. After I’ve seen them all, I go over to him and place them on the counter. ‘Look, look and look.’ I point.

  He looks.

  It’s us, us and us.

  Three pictures. One as we’re leaving the hotel room, with Michael towering by my side, and two different but similar ones of the getaway car, with my face hidden on Jas’s lap. I take a closer look—there’s no way anyone who didn’t know it was me would be able to tell, but it’s more than enough for Kath to set off on the warpath if she puts two and two together. Which wouldn’t be hard. I have to call her.

  Jas sees my face and hands me his mobile.

  I dial the number and head outside. It’s a good fifteen minutes before I walk back over to Jas, waiting by the front door.

  ‘How was it?’ he asks.

  ‘Exactly like I expected. I should be more careful. Do I really know this guy? Strange men and boiled lollies—the whole deal. You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do when you meet up with them.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘You’d better start doing some good deeds. Donating large wads of cash to charity and so on.’

  ‘Already do,’ he says smugly. ‘Only I don’t talk about it.’

  ‘Well, you’d better start talking about it.’

  We make our way out to the car, which has been brought around to the portico.

  ‘I’m going to have to do that anyway.’ Jas looks over at me. ‘Start talking and fast, I mean. Have to spend a few days giving interviews. I didn’t tell you last night, but I’m supposed to be in New York in two days. I’m leaving from Munich.’

  I glance up at him in surprise as I get in the car. ‘You’re not coming back to London? Not coming on the bus?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No time.’

  ‘You don’t want to go to New York, do you?’ It’s written all over his face.

  ‘Nope. But it’s only fair if I want out.’

  I nod on the outside, but my insides twist. Being separated from Jas now, after all we’ve been through, seems like relationship suicide. ‘And then what? After New York?’ I say quietly.

  ‘Depends if you want to stick around for a bit or not. I could meet you back at home. Or in London. In a month.’

  ‘A month? It’ll take that long?’

  ‘Yeah, I know. And it’s not that I don’t want you to come, believe me, but it’s not fair. I won’t have any time, and I can’t guarantee how safe it�
��s going to be. Kath’s going to kill me as it is.’

  I pause. ‘But what about when you’re done? What are you going to do after that?’

  Jas grins. ‘I might take a few months’ holiday. Or a few years’. Let things die down a bit.’

  ‘Anywhere in mind?’ I ask as he starts up the car.

  ‘Maybe somewhere warm. Or a white Christmas.’

  I give him a look before we speed off, my head hitting the back of the seat. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’ I reach up with one hand. ‘I’m getting whiplash.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He laughs. ‘It’s the boy in me. So, what about you?’

  ‘I might stay in London for a bit.’ There’s silence for a moment. ‘You will really come back, won’t you?’ I know I sound needy, but I can’t help myself.

  Jas slows down. Right down. And then he reaches over to grab one of my hands.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about that. You go wherever you want, and this time I’ll track you down. Like a bloodhound.’

  We drive most of the way back to Munich in silence.

  As we get into the city and start to navigate our way to the car rental place, I bring up New York again. ‘So when are you going? To New York, I mean?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  We drive into the car yard and pull up in a spare space. I grab our backpacks while Jas goes inside to drop the keys off and call us a cab.

  Minutes later we’re on our way to the hotel. Everything seems to be moving so fast. This morning, the drive back, even the cab seems to be travelling faster than all the other cars on the road. I look over at Jas and try to guess what he’s thinking. When he sees me watching him he gives me a quick smile and squeezes my knee.

  We’re at the hotel in no time. As we pull up we both see the tour bus at the same time, parked up near the corner. ‘Just in time, huh?’ Jas says to me.